Shop Windows to the Universe

These two pictures show how an artist thinks New Horizons will look at Jupiter. In one picture the Sun and the planets Mercury, Venus and Earth are to the left of the spacecraft. Jupiter is the right of the spacecraft, and Jupiter's icy moon Europa is above New Horizons. In the other picture New Horizons is very close to Jupiter. Jupiter's moon Io (which has volcanoes!) is in front of the giant planet.
Click on image for full size Images courtesy NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute.

New Horizons Flies By Jupiter in February 2007

The New Horizons spacecraft is on its way to Pluto. Along the way, it flew past the giant planet Jupiter. When the spacecraft flew
by Jupiter, Jupiter's strong gravity gave
New Horizons a "slingshot boost" in speed. The boost added 4 km/sec (9,000 mph) to the spacecraft's speed. That's quite a boost! The extra speed will make New Horizon's trip to Pluto take less time. Still, the spacecraft won't reach Pluto until 2015!

New Horizons blasted off in January 2006. It flew
by Jupiter on February 28, 2007. It was
going about 21 km/sec (47,000 mph) when it zoomed past Jupiter! But Pluto is very far away. Even at these high speeds, it will take New Horizons about nine years to go from Earth to Pluto.

New Horizons took some good pictures of Jupiter and gathered other data when New Horizons flew past the planet. The spacecraft has very good cameras and other instruments on board.

The New Horizons team also got to
practice a planetary flyby. When a spacecraft
flies past a planet, it needs to make a lot of complicated moves. It needs to
point its cameras the right way. It needs to turn instruments on and off at
the right times. And it needs to radio the data it collects back to Earth. The
New Horizons team got to practice all of this when the spacecraft flew
past Jupiter. Then they will be ready when New Horizons finally makes it to
Pluto!

You might also be interested in:

Pluto is a frigid ball of ice and rock that orbits far from the Sun on the frozen fringes of our Solar System. Considered a planet, though a rather odd one, from its discovery in 1930 until 2006, it was...more

The New Horizons spacecraft is on its way to Pluto. Along the way, it flew past the giant planet Jupiter. When the spacecraft flew by Jupiter, Jupiter's strong gravity gave New Horizons a "slingshot boost"...more

The Hubble Space Telescope (HST) was one of the most important exploration tools of the past two decades, and will continue to serve as a great resource well into the new millennium. The HST found numerous...more

Driven by a recent surge in space research, the Apollo program hoped to add to the accomplishments of the Lunar Orbiter and Surveyor missions of the late 1960's. Apollo 11 was the name of the first mission...more

Apollo 12 was launched on Nov. 14, 1969, surviving a lightning strike which temporarily shut down many systems, and arrived at the Moon three days later. Astronauts Charles Conrad and Alan Bean descended...more

Apollo 15 marked the start of a new series of missions from the Apollo space program, each capable of exploring more lunar terrain than ever before. Launched on July 26, 1971, Apollo 15 reached the Moon...more

NASA chose Deep Impact to be part of a special series called the Discovery Program on July 7, 1999. The Discovery program specializes in low-cost, scientific projects. In May 2001, Deep Impact was given...more